RE: Good trainer plane???
Sims are great to acquire the basics.
Extreme proficiency in the sim does NOT equate to real world experience though.
A person who is very good with the sim will take a relatively short amount of time to acclimate to the real thing, but that does not mean that the process should be skipped over.
The sims cannot mimic all the nuances of a real plane nor provide training for all of the typically seen situations.